Posts: 20

Topic: twinkie's gone???

Looks like the hostess co.,is shutting down and we will not have any more of the great stuff they baked like twinkies,ding dongs, snow ball's wonder bread,pie's etc. I do not eat too much of these but they are great snacks and bread I grew up with all these goodies.

Re: twinkie's gone???

I read or heard that the are selling their branding as part of the shutdown. So either someone will buy it all up and continue everything Hostess or just the name will be bought and someone else's product will be wrapped as Hostess. I too haven't had a Hostess product for years. Might have to pick up some so my son can have a taste.

Re: twinkie's gone???

If they go, it will be for a short time. Twinkies have been around too long to just disappear. I know a lot of the drivers from Interstate Bakeries. (Hostess, Wonder Bread, Drakes). This has been going down for awhile. They`re the ones I feel bad for. The bakers refused to go back to work after being warned that this would happen

Enjoy Every Sandwich Nothing In Moderation Live Fast, Love Hard,Die Young and Leave a Beautiful Corpse

Re: twinkie's gone???

The strike killed the company and the workers jobs if given a choice I would have choosen to keep working and look for something better if only to keep the cash flow comming in,Unions were good in there time but now they are going the way of the dodo and dinosaurs and they will do it to themselves.

Re: twinkie's gone???

The unions didn't borrow $700 million dollars. This is a managerial "failure," (and by that I mean "completely successful takeover") and is pretty common with these kinds of hedge funds.

Borrow a ton of money. Distribute the money to executives rather than fund operations and expansion. File bankruptcy. Profit (for hedge fund managers)!

It should be illegal, but it's not.

Thank you. It has been hard the past few years with all the Union bashing.

If one were exceptionally biased or naive then one could do what it seems the republican's are doing: Blaming the Unions for all of our problems. It is easy to point at one thing and blame them. Funny thing about the "Blame the Union Game" is that it did not start until the taxpayers started demanding accountability of the TARP funding. Once that happened the Unions became targeted.

Deserved? Like any other entity some of the blame is deserved but much of what one hears is not. No, Unions do not belong in every facet of our business climate. Yes, Unions, as in the apparent case of Hostess, can be a problem. But, before one goes and blames unions perhaps one should think of why they are there in the first place.

I hated unions. In 1978 the Ironworkers Union tried to shut down my family company. They struck just as we accepted a contract to do a job that would either make or break the company. They struck knowing the score and hoping to use the job as a bargaining chip. The whole family jumped in to help along with some non-union labor. I remember, as an eighth-grader running steel through an Ironworker machine and then handing it off to my 4'11" aunt to weld it to another piece. We got the job done, the union members decertified and went back to work for the company with everything they asked for....Except the ability to strike.

When I became a firefighter I had to join. I was very reluctant until the union stepped in a stood down a chief who seemed to make it his life's goal to harass me. I did not step forward nor did I ask the union to intervene. They did anyway.

Unions have done stuff like that for years. No one ever hears about that, only the bad stuff-the "Hoffa" stuff.

It is funny that the CEO of ATT (In 1992) can lay off 17k employees and get a 17 million dollar bonus but Unions are not allowed to stand up for workers. When did defending a worker become a bad thing? Why is it ok for the Koch Brothers, et-al try to limit Union political contributions but allow corporate contributions and PAC contributions to remain?

It is funny that politicians are more than willing to give corporations BILLIONS of dollars in the biggest welfare award ever yet try to silence the voice of the working class. It is funny that many voters would vote for a law to limit unions but allow corporations the freedom to act in any manner they want. Often those actions of the corporations do not take in to account how the "Regular Joe's" will be affected.

Just as we have three aspects of government: Judicial, Executive, Legislature to provide accountability and fairness we have Unions to do the same in the business world. Take it away and we have nothing looking out for the majority of our workers.

Re: twinkie's gone???

Another point in the union debate. If you check the statistics, in the post-war 1940's until the mid 70's, a majority of workers, excluding government employees, were unionized. At one point in the early 60's, some 70% were unionized.

In the 40's, 50's and 60's, one income per family would buy groceries, shelter and quite a few luxuries that were unheard of prior to the second world war. Corporations made steady profits, and the economy worked.

Today, excluding government employees, unionized workers represent less than 10% of workers. This was the result of the concerted efforts, during and after the Reagan years, to de-unionize North America, all in the name of "growth".

What do we have today? We have a HUGE gap between the rich and poor. We have a disappearing middle class. We have most families with both parents working. We have huge social problems that relate directly to these points.

Workers, with sheer numbers, who can afford to be consumers, were the driver behind nearly 4 decades of unparalelled economic stability, with a growing middle class and stable economy.

The drop in union membership in North America co-relates directly to the loss of the middle class, the concentration of weath and the growth of the plutocracy that really runs our governments.

A day of reckoning is on the horizon. I am glad that I am old and won't be around when people finally wise up to how badly they've been misled.

Randy

Hank's prosepctive gutiar player said: "Mr Williams, I'm not sure I can play for you, the onliest chords I know are C D & G"Hank repleis, after a short pause: "Well, what else is there?"

Re: twinkie's gone???

From 1969 til the mid 80's I belonged to the OCAW (Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers) During the 70's we were on strike 3 times (3 months in '74, 4 months in '76, 8 months in '79). In the middle of all of that 3 of my 4 kids were born. My dad, who had just retired from the construction trades union remarked how much money I was making in '77 when daughter #2 was born. I argued that things were better back in 1950 when I was born. My mother had kept every check stub my dad ever made, so we pulled out the stub from the week I was born in March, 1950. He was making $2.10 an hour working construction at the steel mill. Out of that, taxes (Fed, FICA, etc) took $6.00, leaving him $78 for the week. The doctor bill for my birth was $25 (Mom still had receipts), hospital bill was $25 and there was still enough left over to buy groceries for the week - all out of one check! After taxes, etc were taken out of my check, it would have taken every dime for 17 weeks to pay the doctor and hospital bills. (Thank God I had insurance). Things sure weren't better after 27 years.

People like to blame the Reagan years but union membership peaked in the late 50's, early 60's. From data I found on-line, union membership was at 31.4% of the work force in 1960. During the Kennedy/ Johnson years it dropped 4% to 27.4% in 1970. During the Nixon/Ford/Carter years it dropped 5.5% so that by 1980 it was 21.9%. During the Reagan years it dropped 5.8 % to 16.1% although AFL-CIO membership actually increased. It was the small independent unions that dropped membership during this time. During the Clinton years it dropped another 2.5% to 13.5% and finally during the younger Bush years it dropped 1.6% so that by 2010 only 11.9 % were unionized.

Of the 46 years I spent in the work force, exactly half was spent as a union member (retail clerk's union, construction trades, paper mill workers, oil/chemical/atomic workers, IBEW). Not all was a good experience, but for those who work for a company which produces a profit from their labor, I feel it is their right to join together to receive their fair share and withdraw their labor as a bargaining chip. For those who work in public service, it's OK to unionize for worker protection but I object to strikes which impact fellow citizens.

One thing is for sure. As a nation we need to develop new processes and industries which will provide a decent wage for our work force. We can't sell each other insurance and fry each other hamburgers forever.

Re: twinkie's gone???

I'm simply looking at it from a spreadsheet standpoint. They actually had closer to a full billion in debt, $850 million of which was collateralized, meaning it was backed by something. In this case, that was the assets of the business, including cash in worker pension funds. This is where the union had issues.

Only $185 million was accrued towards pension payouts.

All union bashing/praising aside, this is simply a matter of accounting.

Re: twinkie's gone???

I'm enjoying reading these posts. You all know I'm pro union. My dad was a member of and heavily involved in the BLE (Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers) while I was growing up, and my husband is a Union Ironworker. I too worked in a Union at one time. I was a member of the Teamster's Union over 10 years ago. Back then, I made the same wage I do now but also had insurance. It was still difficult then to support myself and my son as a single mom, but it sure was a lot easier then. I could never do it NOW at the same wage without insurance. I don't know how people can do the same job my husband does for a measely $10/hr and zero benefits. God bless them, and know this... that company is making OVER $20 more per hour off your work than the company that pays my husband (and the company that pays my husband is doing quite well). A little more into the workers pocket and a little less into the guy sitting in the fancy office chair, and this country would be a little nicer to be in for those that were ONCE upper middle class but are now lower middle class and teetering on being at poverty level.

I too agree, sometimes Unions go too far... don't get me wrong... there is no perfection or utopia... but there is "better" and "worse".

What's really sad about the whole Hostess debacle is the fact that, like Jerome said, someone got rich while the average Joe is now out of a job.

Art and beauty are in the eyes of the beholder.What constitutes excellent music is in the ears of the listener.

Re: twinkie's gone???

I am not going too get into the politics or union issues here just give me my snow balls,cupcakes,twinkies,wonder bread. The single guys here need these kind of goodies as most of us do not get homede cupcakes pies,and other goodies.

Re: twinkie's gone???

Just dont be the sucker on e-bay who pays 34 budks for 6 boxes.

Mal - Well, lady, I must say, you're my kinda stupid.Mal - Jayne, your mouth is talking. You might wanna look to thatKaylee - No power in the verse can stop me. BOOK- you're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theatre.

Re: twinkie's gone???

I heard people were selling them online,you really have too be a sucker to buy that stuff online.

Yeah - you say that now. Don't come knocking on my bunker door on nuclear holocaust day and ask for a single 1 of my 200 cases of Twinkies.

At least you wont have to worry about preserving them! they last forever! I would be more inclined to worry about some hermetically sealed gitar strings! They have more than one use,, after they go dead you can use them in case zombies attack to cut their heads off!

Mal - Well, lady, I must say, you're my kinda stupid.Mal - Jayne, your mouth is talking. You might wanna look to thatKaylee - No power in the verse can stop me. BOOK- you're going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theatre.

Re: twinkie's gone???

I heard people were selling them online,you really have too be a sucker to buy that stuff online.

Yeah - you say that now. Don't come knocking on my bunker door on nuclear holocaust day and ask for a single 1 of my 200 cases of Twinkies.

At least you wont have to worry about preserving them! they last forever! I would be more inclined to worry about some hermetically sealed gitar strings! They have more than one use,, after they go dead you can use them in case zombies attack to cut their heads off!